Tuesday, September 1, 2009

A plea to city planners everywhere

About once a month at work, I spend a couple of hours addressing birthday cards for our employees. This means I get a very close look at hundreds of addresses, mostly in Utah, and I'm noticing an alarming trend. There are several streets/cul-de-sacs/avenues/etc. that are using multiple types of street identification (for lack of a better term). For example, I would expect to see "Horsetail Trail" or "Horsetail Lane," but "Horsetail Trail Lane?" That's just redundant. What gets really ridiculous is when some city planner (or whoever the heck comes up with this stuff) gets all long-winded naming apartment complex roads. And it's even worse when it's so far south that the street number alone is unusually long. And THEN, the complex comes up with some absurd numbering system

For example: 126077 South Wasatch Rim Trail Avenue #13766 - D (not someone's real address but based on an actual pattern). Are you kidding me? It barely fits on the envelope (and looks really weird if the person's name is something tiny like Cal Brown). And are there really 13,766 units in this complex? Doubtful. Even if there were, I don't think adding the letter "D" is really going to help anyone find it.

People. Coming up with a longer name for your street doesn't make you sound richer or smarter or better educated. If we change the above to 126077 S Wasatch Rim #12 will anyone go to bed hungry? I thought not. Based on the...unusual...habits about naming children we see in Utah, I'm thinking this is a regional thing, am I right?

I realize this is kind of a weird thing to be bothered by, but I think it reflects an unfortunate lack of self-restraint in our modern culture of grammar and naming conventions. Also, I don't want to someday have to buy a ridiculously large mailbox just because I live at 543210 West Crimson Sunset View Point Lane Road.

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